Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

The Modern Art Notes Podcast: Josiah McElheny

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Josiah McElheny. A survey of McElheny’s work is on view through October 14 at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. Titled “Some Pictures of the Infinite,” it was curated by Helen Molesworth.

McElheny was the recipient of a 2006 MacArthur ‘genius’ fellowship. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Museum of Modern Art. During a 2005 fellowship at the Wexner Center for the Arts, McElheny collaborated with Ohio State University professor David Weinberg, a process which resulted in An End to Modernity (2005), which is now in the collection of the Tate. The fantastic Wexner publication that chronicled the residency and the resulting work is available for free as a PDF.

Among the topics McElheny and I discuss are:

Why his artistic practice emphasizes the role of oral traditions;

The tactility of his art, and whether McElheny ever wants to touch his work after it’s been made and installed;

Why we can’t see ourselves in some of McElheny’s mirror sculptures; and

The story of McElheny’s glass ‘loving cups,’ which he gifts to close friends on the occasion of their weddings.

On the second segment of the show I talk with Kansas City-based artist A. Bitterman, who is currently in residence at Indy Island, Andrea Zittel’s live-in sculpture in the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s 100 Acres sculpture park. His project there is titled “Indigenous: Out of the Wild with A. Bitterman” and has a fantastic website.

Bitterman’s previous project, Point of Interest, treated his home as a tourist attraction and attracted support from the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. During our conversation we discuss this blog post which details the GPS tracker the IMA created for his project.

To download the program directly, click here. To download or subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, click here. To subscribe to The MAN Podcast’s RSS feed, click here. You can stream the program through the player below.

The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. It is released under this Creative Commons license. The program was edited by Wilson Butterworth. For images of the works discussed on this week’s show, click through to the jump.